Scripture Daily

Context No. 79 of 4322 · Genesis

Context · Reflection

Genesis 34:11-17: in context

11Shechem said to her father and to her brothers, “Let me find favor in your eyes, and whatever you will tell me I will give. 12Ask me a great amount for a dowry, and I will give whatever you ask of me, but give me the young lady as a wife.” 13The sons of Jacob answered Shechem and Hamor his father with deceit when they spoke, because he had defiled Dinah their sister, 14and said to them, “We can’t do this thing, to give our sister to one who is uncircumcised; for that is a reproach to us. 15Only on this condition will we consent to you. If you will be as we are, that every male of you be circumcised, 16then will we give our daughters to you; and we will take your daughters to us, and we will dwell with you, and we will become one people. 17But if you will not listen to us and be circumcised, then we will take our sister, and we will be gone.”

Jacob's daughter Dinah has been raped by Shechem, a prince of the local Hivite town. Her brothers hear of it while their father says nothing. This passage is the negotiation that follows, and every party in it is trading in something other than what they say.

Shechem, who wants to marry her, offers whatever bride price they name, however great. Hamor his father proposes a general intermarriage between the two peoples, and in the verses after this he sells it to his own townsmen with a quiet argument about property: their livestock and their goods will become ours. Jacob's sons answer with deceit, the narrator says so directly. They set one condition, that every male in the town be circumcised, and dress it up as a religious scruple.

They are using the sign of the covenant as a weapon. Three days later, while the men are in pain, Simeon and Levi kill them all. Jacob's only recorded objection is that this will damage his standing with the neighbors, and on his deathbed he curses their anger. Everyone here is negotiating past the injury, and the one person who never speaks in the chapter is Dinah. When something is done to someone I am responsible for, whose interests do I actually start defending?

Sources